File photoThe annual free Christmas dinner at Bill's Coffee Manor, 3306 Francis St., was put on especially for the elderly who might have spent the day alone. Pictured here in 1990 are Edward Bland, left, and Ralph Brown, both of Jackson.

True Christmas spirit can be hard to find, but for 20 years it thrived at a Summit Township eatery.

Bill’s Coffee Manor, 3306 Francis St., wasn’t a fancy place. It was a neighborhood diner, frequented by a regular clientele that liked the comfortable atmosphere, hot coffee and home-cooked meals.

But on Christmas Day from 1984 to 2003, the promise of kindness topped off by turkey and mashed potatoes made Bill’s a gift to Jackson’s elderly, lonely and needy — and the scores of volunteers who served them.

“It was the real spirit,” said Jackson’s Mike Trudell, who volunteered at every Christmas dinner served at Bill’s. “I looked forward to it like some people look forward to a vacation or going to Hawaii.”

The dinner was orchestrated by restaurant owners Bill and Carol Rasmussen and daughters Shellie, Tina, Dawn and Denise. But they all agree it happened through the generosity of the community, both in time and donations of food, toys, baked goods or money.

“It was a real Christmas for everybody,” said an upbeat 63-year-old Bill Rasmussen, who’s still battling the effects of a Dec. 9, 2003, stroke that prompted the cancellation of the 2004 Christmas dinner and the 2007 sale of the restaurant. “I loved the people.”

The Rasmussens are Jackson natives who were friends in high school, but not sweethearts.

After graduating from Parkside High School in 1965, Bill joined the Marines and served four years in Vietnam.

He and Carol married in 1970, and he joined the Summit Township Fire Department, sold cars at Jackson Chrysler Plymouth and worked at some local factories, including Tomkins-Johnson.

File photoHosting a Christmas dinner at Bill's Coffee Manor, 3306 Francis St., was a family affair for the Rasmussen family, pictured here in 1986. They are back row from left, Bill and Carol Rasmussen and daughter Shellie and front row from left, daughters Tina, Dawn and Denise.

Bill fulfilled a lifelong dream of feeding folks in April 1983 when he bought Andy’s Restaurant, which also had been the Coffee Manor Inn for 20 years.

“I loved to cook, I loved people and I wanted to get ahead,” he said.

The idea for the Christmas dinner came from conversations Bill had with employees and customers.

“There were people sitting home and eating soup,” he said at the time. “We just wanted to give them a chance to be with someone that day.”

The motivation to make it happen, though, stemmed from Bill’s own childhood experience of being on the receiving end of the community’s unconditional kindness, Carol said.

“He was about 8 when his dad died just before Christmas,” she said. “There were four kids in the family, and they were all little. This community gave them Christmas. He never forgot that, and he decided he was going to give it back.”

About 20 friends helped the family serve turkey and the trimmings to about 200 local residents at the first Christmas dinner in 1984.

“I knew there were a lot of lonely people out there, but this was more than I ever imagined,” Bill said then.

“We had a feeling here that can’t ever be expressed in words.”

A year later, attendance was up to about 425 people, and about 50 dinners were delivered to people who were homebound.

“Each year we try to go a little bit bigger because there are people out there who don’t have anywhere to go,” he said in 1985.

At its peak in 2002, Bill’s Coffee Manor was serving about 2,000 people and delivering another 500 meals to the homebound.

From the beginning, Bill was adamant that the Christmas dinner was “not a welfare dinner.”

“It isn’t a soup kitchen,” he said after the 1986 dinner that served about 600 people. “These are people who just need to be with people. We try to make them feel special.”

Bill gave his staff the day off, but many of them volunteered anyway.

They were joined by an army of friends, regular customers and people who just wanted to be a part of Bill’s selflessness.

“The best part was seeing people’s faces light up when they came through the door and saw that people were willing to do something like this for them,” Trudell said.

The experience sticks with you, said Rasmussen family friends Garth and Shirley Hyliard, who volunteered every year.

“I remember one family of five or six who came every year,” Shirley Hyliard said. “They were the first ones there, and then they came back right at the very end and ate again. They weren’t being greedy. It was probably the only two decent meals they’d had in a long time.”

The dinner also became the Rasmussen family Christmas. All four daughters volunteered and waited to open their presents with their parents until after the meal was over and the restaurant cleaned up.

“I enjoyed it,” said Denise Rasmussen, now 33. “That’s what we knew as Christmas, and it was very rewarding. Seeing the impact it had on people does stay with you.”

The dinner never had an air of charity about it, either, Carol said. Rather, it was a festive gathering of friends.

“Everybody was always so happy,” she said. “The thing that amazes me still is that in all those years, I could probably count on only one hand the really nasty people. It shows you that there are a whole lot more good people out there than bad ones.”

Tidbits

• Bill and Carol Rasmussen are both 63 and have been married for 40 years. They have four daughters: Shellie Sanders, 39, judicial secretary to District Judge Michael Klaeren; Tina Ruhl, 35, pre-admission testing clerical associate at Allegiance Health; Denise Rasmussen, 33, emergency room nurse at Allegiance Health; and Dawn Fehrenbach, 33, emergency room clerical associate at Allegiance Health.

They also have eight grandchildren, with a ninth on the way in the spring. They are Maranda Sanders, 18; Shelby Sanders, 15; Haleigh Sanders, 10; Joey Sanders, 8; Tyler Ruhl, 17; Courtney Ruhl, 11; Gabrielle Ruhl, 4 and Gavin Warner, 8.

• The Rasmussens sold Bill’s Coffee Manor in 2007, just shy of its 24th anniversary in business. It’s now Marr’s South. They are retired.

• Bill suffered a stroke on Dec. 9, 2003, almost canceling the restaurant’s community Christmas dinner that year. Friends, employees and family rallied to make it happen.

“We were going to do Christmas dinner if it was the last thing we did for him,” Denise said. “It was his baby, his thing. We were going to make it happen one way or another.”

• Bill always said he liked to think the community was responsible for the Christmas dinner and that he was “just kind of the host.”

The community, churches, businesses and civic organizations always came through with donations of food, money, toys and more to make sure it happened, Carol said. Every child who attended went home with a toy.

“We would never have been able to do it without the help of the community,” Denise said. “Without the volunteers and donations, we would never have been able to pull it off.”

• An accidental fire on Friday, Sept. 5, 1986, caused $25,000 in damage to the restaurant’s kitchen. It did not affect plans for that year’s Christmas dinner. Bill’s Coffee Manor reopened in mid-November.

• Before it was Bill’s Coffee Manor (1983), the restaurant at 3306 Francis St. was a confectioners shop (1940s), the Milky Way Grill (1955), Sips ‘N Sack Drive-In, (1958), Coffee Manor Inn (1961), The Zoo (1981) and Andy’s (1982).